Bobby Beathard had to fight his way to Hog Heaven

Tuesday

The year Cleveland's Brian Sipe was MVP of the NFL, Bobby Beathard wasn't even sure he was going keep his job. The turning point came when he made a move even the man he hired couldn't believe.

Surfer boy Bobby Beathard and stock car king Joe Gibbs turned Washington into Hog Heaven by seeing a different NFL from the same page.

They became a uniquely fascinating general manager-head coach duo on their way to Canton, where Gibbs will present Beathard for induction as part of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Class of 2018.

Differences in style shortened their partnership during an era that produced three Washington Super Bowls.

In later life, they look back on a shared legacy of leading a franchise to its greatest era.

Gibbs, 77, owns a racing team that has won four NASCAR Cup series. Beathard, 81, is a national age-group body-surfing champion.

What these artists did in the football studio must seem more surreal than Picasso to a Washington fan base that has witnessed one playoff victory since 1999.

The Beathard-Gibbs adminstration unfolded during Ronald Reagan's two terms in the White House.

In 1980, at age 43, Beathard was just another Bob, in his third year as general manager of the Redskins, who were going in reverse.

Beathard had been around in the scouting world, but his previous job as a Miami personnel executive (1972-77) featured success mostly attributed to czar Don Shula.

Like Shula, Beathard was born in Ohio, but nobody in Buckeye land was talking about the latter in 1980. Joe Charboneau of the Indians was American League rookie of the year. Massillon linebacker Rick Spielman broke two thumbs in a state title game against Gerry Faust's Cincinnati Moeller juggernaut. Browns quarterback Brian Sipe was most valuable player of the NFL.

At about the time Washington sank to 3-10 in 1980, celebrity owner Jack Kent Cooke began to decide whether he would keep his head coach, Jack Pardee, or his general manager, Beathard. It wasn't going to be both.

Times were turbulent for Cooke, who had just gone through two divorces, one in 1979 in which Judge Joseph Wapner awarded a then-record $42 million settlement to his ex-wife and another late in 1980.

Cooke, in his late 60s, was persuaded by Beathard's engaging personality, reputation as a Shula underling, and explanation as to why building through the draft would work under the right head coach.

Beathard's maverick manner better aligned with Cooke, who was something of a Bill Veeck free-wheeler, than did Pardee's.

Pardee was a large man who had spent 17 years as an NFL linebacker, including a last hurrah with Washington's "Over the Hill Gang" coached by George Allen. George Halas had hired Pardee as head coach in Chicago just three years after he started at linebacker for Washington in a Super Bowl. With two years left on a contract paying $125,000 a year, Pardee assured Cooke he could return to winning if the right veterans could be added.

Beathard was a skinny little former Cal Poly quarterback whose bid to play in the NFL was short-lived. He got funneled by Al Davis into a scouting career that led to promotions but now was at a crossroads.

Six weeks of speculation raged in the Washington newspapers.

Cooke ended it by announcing:

"I face the hard task of choosing between the two philosophies. After careful consideration, I have decided to endorse Mr. Beathard's program of a winning future for the Redskins."

Pardee, who had been hired weeks before Beathard in 1978, lamented the decision in the Washington Post:

"I believe the coach should have control and not have to worry about being shot down from other angles. Everything that affects the record on the field should be under the coach's control. They don't print the general manager's record in the newspaper.

"It's a sad experience. It's the first time I've ever been fired from anything."

Cooke gave his general manager a free hand in picking the next coach. Everyone had a suggestion. One was to bring back the 61-year-old Allen, who had gone 67-30-1 with Washington from 1971-77. Another was to chase 44-year-old John Madden (Beathard's former Cal Poly teammate), who jumped to the TV booth after going 103-32-7 as head coach of the Raiders from 1969-78.

Gibbs was just another Joe. He had been a quarterback at San Diego State 10 years before Sipe. For three years in the 1960s, when Madden was defensive coordinator at San Diego State, Gibbs was the Aztecs' offensive line coach.

Gibbs had just finished a short stint as an offensive coordinator of Tampa Bay's expansion franchise. Beathard heard good things about Gibbs, especially from a coach named Ernie Zampese, and came to view him as a rising star.

Twenty-six years later, when Gibbs was giving his Hall of Fame acceptance speech in Canton, he still couldn't believe Beathard pulled it off.

"Can you imagine him going into Jack Kent Cooke and recommending they hire Joe Gibbs?" Gibbs said on the front steps of the Hall. "I can hear Mr. Cooke now. 'Joe who?'

"Bobby, thanks for having the guts to do that. I also want to say thanks for picking all those players and making it easy."

Thus, as Beathard makes his way to the stage where his bronze bust awaits, it should be noted he is going in not just because he could pick Hall of Fame players. He brought Washington its Hall of Fame coach.

Gibbs was 39 years old when he came to Washington.

"Besides being bright and a terrific Xs and Os guy, Joe is a leader," Beathard said at the introductory press conference in 1980. "He has an unusual talent to get along with players."

Gibbs weighed in with a plan that sounded simple: "You get the players, Bobby. We'll coach 'em."

It soon got complicated. Gibbs' first five games ended with losses to the Cowboys, Giants, Cardinals, Eagles and 49ers. Cooke called in Beathard and Gibbs for a long meeting.

An 8-3 hot streak to end the 1981 season started the party. Then came Super Bowl wins capping the 1982 and 1987 seasons.

Beathard drafted a Hall of Fame receiver (Art Monk) with a 1980 first-round pick, assembled one of the better lines in NFL history ("The Hogs"), learned to live with quirky quarterback Joe Theismann, and plucked a Hall of Fame cornerback out of Texas A&I (Darrell Green) with a Round 1 pick in 1983.

Beathard worked through the 1989 draft before resigning and taking a general manager job with the Chargers. The 1991 Redskins, with a roster mostly assembled by Beathard, won another Super Bowl; the quarterback was Mark Rypien, a Round 6 pick by Beathard in 1986.

Beathard made himself at home in San Diego, where he was general manager of the Chargers for 11 seasons. It was a place where he could indulge his passions for long-distance running, body surfing and football architecture.

As in Washington, Beathard worked for a while with an inherited head coach (Dan Henning) and brought in a replacement (Bobby Ross) who took the team to the next level.

Along the lines of Gibbs, Ross lost the first four games of his first season but went 11-1 the rest of the way. In the third season under Ross, the franchise reached its first Super Bowl.

Beathard and Ross won 50 games together across five seasons before the coach resigned.

"I did not want this to come about," Ross said in a news conference the day of his departure. "Bobby Beathard felt our philosophical differences could not be overcome. I was surprised by that."

In what became the last five years of Beathard's general manager career, the Chargers went 18-46. Yet, the Los Angeles Times lamented Beathard's resignation in an article than ran in April of 2001:

"The Chargers have replaced one of the most instinctive, gutsy and proven judges of talent in NFL history with an accountant. The team announced that Ed McGuire, a former account representative for Met Life and a senior manager of labor operations for the NFL, now will be in charge of everyone on the Chargers except the owner."

McGuire himself was quoted in the article, saying, "There's only one Bobby Beathard. It's a tough perception to overcome."

In retrospect, Beathard calls his years with Gibbs "the most fun I had in a relationship with a head coach."

They won Super Bowls (if, as seems fair, one counts the one captured not long after Beathard left for San Diego) with three different starting quarterbacks, Theismann, Doug Williams and Rypien.

Their last full year together was the least fun. A 17-13 home loss to Bernie Kosar and the Browns was part of a 2-6 second half of the season.

Before the 1989 draft, shortly before Beathard resigned, Gibbs answered questions about problems with his GM.

"Is there disagreement?" Gibbs said. "There has been disagreement between me and Bobby, at times, from the first day, as far as players."

There were serious talks about Beathard returning to Washington as general manager in 2001. It didn't work out.

Gibbs did go back to Washington as head coach in 2004, after a 12-year absence. He stayed four seasons, going 31-16.

Subsequent head coaches Jim Zorn, Mike Shanahan and Jay Gruden have compiled a 64-97-1 record. On March 9, owner Daniel Snyder fired general manager Scot McLoughan, who wound up working the 2018 draft as a Browns consultant.

In August, Beathard and Gibbs will reunite during Hall of Fame induction week. They will remind Washington and the rest of the NFL how good it can get when the right general manager and head coach work through the same page from different points of view.

Reach Steve at 330-580-8347 or

steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com

On Twitter: @sdoerschukREP

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